IMAGES OF OBAMA

The firestorm that has erupted over the New Yorker's latest cover might prove to be nothing more than a tempest in a teapot. Certainly those most inclined to view Obama and his wife in the image depicted on that cover are unlikely to read the accompanying article. Nor are they likely to be dissuaded from believing that skullcap wearing Obama is a Muslim fanatic hell-bent on shredding the Constitution, heaping scorn on the American flag and unleashing Osama bin-Laden on a brow-beaten American public befuddled that a black African nationalist, emblazoned in an over-sized Afro, disguised in camouflage and armed with an AK-47 assault rifle. Who knew that a vote for Obama was a vote for black power? Who knew that a vote for Obama was a vote to end Christianity in America? Who knew that a vote for Obama was a vote to condemn the United States to the ashes of history?

Why all the fuss? Is it an attempt at parody as the editor of the New Yorker plaintively pleaded in interviews Monday. And, maybe even a few people get it. Or do they? Certainly, this work of cartoonist Brian Bliss is typical of his other work, displayed in the 15 July edition of the Los Angeles Times. Why the outrage?

Perhaps it is because we know so little about Obama himself. Yes, we know that he was raised in the heartland state of Kansas by his grandparents. We know he had a close relationship with his grandmother as a child. He is the product of a divorced family: an absent father and a mother who seemed to embrace the educated hippie lifestyle to the max. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Obama has a half-sister who is part Indonesian. He has relatives who are Muslim, though he himself practices a liberal brand of Christianity. He is world experienced, as he spent part of his childhood growing up in Hawaii and in Indonesia. What more could one ask of a Harvard educated, former head of the Law Review who met and married a woman of modest background (Southside Chicago) who parlayed educational opportunities to become a highly educated and capable lawyer.

But what will he do as president? Will he trash the Constitution, burn the American flag in disgust, preside over the rebirth of black power and end the Judeo-Christian dominance of the United States? Of course not! Beyond calling for an end to the war in Iraq and the dispatch of American soldiers to Afghanistan to fight a resurgent Taliban, it is difficult to discern what the election of Barack Obama might entail. We know - more or less - what McCain would do: continue the Bush economic policies that have led to the bursting of America's housing bubble, the failing of investment and full-service banks, the easing of the tax burden of America's most wealthy, and the wating of American lives in a pointless war in Iraq. Oh yes, McCain may bedeck the past as present in a new cloth of environmental consciousness. Whether he allows his aspirations with respect to global warming to overide his kowtowing to big business is another matter and one that will probably end up with a less recalcitrant American image on the environment abroad, but an America that still refuses to lead on the envirnoment and continues to plant roadblocks in the paths of other trailblazers.

McCain we know; Obama we don't. It doesn't help that some Obamistas have blessed their leader with a power of prescience uncommon among American politicians. He, and he alone, opposed to the Iraq folly from the outset. He predicted that the surge would not lead to the political results promised by Bush. Yet, with respect to the economy, we know precious little about he sees beyond the horizon. Does he come into office like FDR with a vague notion that somehow there must be a change, but with little in the way of firm policy proposals that might steer America out of the Great Depression? Or, will he offer us tepid proposals such as his suggestions how health care might be improved in the hope that no one will notice that he was a very liberal senator in his short-term in office? Moderation now, radical change later.

Even respected black politicians like Jesse Jackson seem perplexed. By pointing to the many dysfunctional elements of urban black culture, Obama seems to be talking down to African-Americans. Maybe many traditional black leaders share Jackson's sentiment that Obama needs to be castrated. Certainly, Julian Bond did not recoil in horror when Jackson whispered these thoughts his way.

What Jackson does not get and many Obama supporters do get is that Obama is a politician's Tiger Woods. He threatens no one, and his affable cool keeps us glued, even though we know that none of Woods' competitors have a chance to win unless Woods stumbles. Hillary Clinton never got it, as she tried to persuade Democrats that Obama was a flash in the pan who could not carry the party to victory in November. Like Tiger, Obama is a polyglot perhaps, a polymorph probably. In any event, both he and Tiger are an amalgam of the melting pot that is 21st century America. He is not black in the traditional sense, though his marriage to Michelle certainly raises his street cred. He could have chosen to parlay his Harvard education into business wealth. Instead, he chose to organize among the poor, an African-American minority, in Chicago.

To pin him down and decide that Obama is one thing or even to wish that he be so pinned down misses the point completely. He is everything and nothing. He is anything anyone inclined to support this embodiment of cool wishes to imagine him to be. He is nothing in that we won't know what he is capable of until he gets elected and faces challenges few presidents since FDR have faced. He may never attempt to enlarge the Supreme Court as FDR tried when faced with constant obstructionism on the part of the then conservative majority. Yet, a President Obama, even armed with large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, will face a hostile Supreme Court.

Of course, he has one advantage that FDR did not have. He can bring about a lot of change by refusing simply to shred the Constitution as Bush 43 and company have done. Obama could even allow criminal prosecutions to proceed against the telecom companies that aided and abetted in Bush's illegal wiretapping of phone conversations. Removing the troops from Iraq and dispatching them to Afghanistan would certainly end the war of false pretenses against Iraq and engender good will in the international community. Standing up to the Pakistani military and the ISI, which sponsored and fostered the Taliban during the struggle against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and still seems too closely entangled with Taliban exiles in Pakistan, would be a positive step forward. To condition continued American assistance to Pakistan on the expansion of incipient programs to educate Pakistan's rural poor in private or government run schools that do not preach the hatred of Taliban madrassas would be another step in the right direction.

To get there you have to trust in Obama. And, maybe that explains why many were outraged at the New Yorker cover. How can you trust a man married to a Black Panther? How can you trust a man decked out in traditional (Indonesian or North African?) Islamic garb? How can you trust a man who keeps warm under the watchful eye of Osama and uses American history and all that the flag represents as fuel? You can't and the outrage is palpable. I just wish that Obama had made a cute quip before dissing the cover. Perhaps he ought to have mused who was minding the children while he was fist-bumping Angela - I mean, Michelle. Perhaps the Los Angeles Times' James Rainey got it correct when he suggested that Obama's initial reaction ought to have been along the lines of: "Hey, I thought Michelle looked pretty good in camouflage."

But, it's satire, isn't it? After all, as Sandra Laman, New York Times reader and letter to the editor writer noted, satire is defined as "a literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision or wit". And, as Tim Rutten in the 16 July edition of the Los Angeles Times added, "the ancient Irish believed that a poet's satire had the power to kill the target of his scorn". Certainly, the Obamas are the target and many critics feel this sort of attack has the power to at least harm, if not kill, the chances of an Obama presidency. Yet, as Ms. Laman pointed out the target of the cartoonist's wrath is amiss. What did the Obamas do to deserve this bit of pointed derision?

Nothing, nothing at all. Michelle Obama apparently has never professed a love for black revolution. She did focus on becoming a highly trained, Harvard educated lawyer. At worst, she once implied that only the nomination of Obama had given her immense pride in being American. For that, she earned the unwarranted attack of right-wing zealots who couldn't imagine why anyone of privilege would fail to appreciate the greatness of America. And, Barack? Once when visiting his ancestral homeland of Kenya he donned traditional attire. Yet, now he is draped in Muslim garb. True, Michelle and Barack have given each other the fist bump. But, wasn't that Chase Utley who fist bumped the first base coach after singling in the fifth inning during the All Star game? The fact is it took a Fox News waif to turn a harmless fist bump into a terrorist trope.

The target of the satire is misplaced. Instead of parodying Sean Hannity and every other neanderthal at Fox News or religious yokel who insist on addressing Mr. Obama by his middle name Hussein, carping constantly that Obama fails to wear the appropriate lapel flag or fabricating facts out of white middle class fear, Mr. Blitt targets the Obamas instead. And, that's why his satire fails.

A look at the partial gallery of covers by Mr. Blitt suggests that this is not the one exception to an otherwise brilliant career. Though he correctly spoofs both Barack and Hillary by having them in bed together lunging for a ringing phone at 3 am, another cover completely misses the point. In her over-the-top attack ad during the Texas primary, Mrs. Clinton opened up a can of worms by suggesting that she was better prepared to take a 3 am phone call. The response of the Obama campaign practically cried out for the skewering that ensued. But, another of Mr. Blitt's cover, a satire centered on two male sailors kissing in public demonstrates how awry his aim can be. Although the cover is understandable as parody - it is after all a take-off of a well-known WWII photo showing a sailor and his girl embracing - it misses its target. Why poke fun at gay soldiers sharing a moment of intimate passion, yet neglect to deride the fuddyduddies who still believe that Don't Ask, Don't Tell is just one more horrible Clinton policy that undermined America's confidence in its military?

Humor helps and even though a case has just been made that the New Yorker crossed a line and fingered two innocent people, wouldn't it have been more profitable to slit the sails with a casual aside and then complain about the obvious unfairness of it all. Yes, James Rainey is right. A quip might have been quite disarming. Yet, the content of Mr. Blitt's cover invented an absurdity that only exists in the minds of the most rabid Obama haters. Content counts, and, as Martin Luther King asserted it's the content of our character by which we shall be judged. The New Yorker cover is one absurdity too far, and it explains why the magazine has egg all over its collective face.